


let's get lost, you can take me home

by falloutboiruto



Category: Boruto: Naruto Next Generations
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), F/M, Fluff, Future Fic, Getting Together, Summer Romance, Teenage Dorks, and nothing can stop me, body image issues, brief mention of racism, medic!mitsuki, my headcanon is that cho cho watches the ninja world equivalent to beauty youtube
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-12
Updated: 2020-04-12
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:33:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23616043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/falloutboiruto/pseuds/falloutboiruto
Summary: Cho Cho and Mitsuki get stationed together for a summer mission at an ice cream shop. Things heat up pretty fast, and that's not only because there's no AC.
Relationships: Akimichi Chouchou/Mitsuki
Comments: 12
Kudos: 53





	let's get lost, you can take me home

**Author's Note:**

> warning for discussion of body image issues and racism(not overt or explicit discrimination bc that doesn't seem to be part of cho cho's everyday life in the canon naruto universe, but rather her feeling kinda left out in some specific situations). these are sensitive subjects so if u have any feedback on those themes of the story, please write it in the comments and i'll get back to you ^^
> 
> otherwise this is fluffy fluff! the fluffiest!  
> also mitsuki is a medic in this one BECAUSE I SAY SO!!!!!!!!!  
> beta read by: @reaperduckling  
> title from: summerboy by lady gaga

Summer was almost at the corner. Cho Cho had gotten a week off her Team 10 duties and spent her much-needed vacation with visiting her extended family in the Hidden Cloud. Spending time with her cousins on her mom’s side was so much fun. They had gone makeup shopping together and gotten her hair braided at a salon for a fresh summer look. But now, she had to head back to the Hidden Leaf and back to chasing those bastardly Kara bastards. Her team might’ve been prone to driving her crazy sometimes, but she had missed them during her short absence.

After coming back home, she got a text saying that her next mission wasn’t one with Shikadai and Inojin, but rather with… Mitsuki?

She hadn’t seen Mitsuki for a while, honestly. He was always off doing super important Team 7 stuff, and she was similarly busy with her team missions. When they met up at the mission assignments office, he seemed quite happy to see her. She was too, she supposed.

“I like your new hair,” Mitsuki said. “It looks very nice. You always spend so much time and effort on your appearance. It’s quite fascinating.”

“Uh, thanks?” Cho Cho said. Well, to be fair, she knew Mitsuki well enough by now to know that it was a genuine compliment. Because she knew she looked good. She tucked her hair behind her ear, suddenly feeling very aware of her appearance. How she was standing, how her body language could possibly be interpreted. All those little things suddenly mattered so much more. Trying to shake the awkward feeling, she decided to focus on Mitsuki instead. He was kind of staring at her, but aside from that, he _had_ grown kind of tall now, but like, _whatever_. She wasn’t looking. Anyways, their shared mission was going to be…

 _“Working in an ice cream store?”_ she all-but-shouted. “But we have been investigating _Kara_ for years now! Aren’t we needed more elsewhere?”

“You have to do this mission because it says so on this paper,” the mission assignment lady snapped. “It’s high season for ice cream sales, and the owner of the store got sick and can’t find any other replacements. That’s where _you_ come in. It’s only for a couple of weeks, you’ll be back to hunting those Kara delinquents in no-time.”

“Seems fine. Don’t we usually work in three-man cells, though?” Mitsuki wondered, calm as ever. So, he had already accepted this. _Go figure._

“Well, not this time!” the lady said while rolling her eyes. “It’s just running an ice cream shop for a couple of weeks. You’re chuunin. You’re practically adults! What could go wrong?”

“Maybe the freezer would break?” Cho Cho giggled. ”If all the ice cream melts and floods the shop, I might drown.”

“ _Hm_ ,” Mitsuki said, as serious as a heart attack. "Well, I do know CPR and am fairly accomplished in medical ninjutsu. Even if your very unlikely scenario comes true, we can solve it.”

He really didn’t understand jokes, huh?

“You hear him. Now go!” The lady shooed them of there with big, exaggerated hand motions, and closed her cubicle window.

During Cho Cho and Mitsuki’s silent walk towards the exit, Mitsuki suddenly made a quiet _oh_ -sound and poked Cho Cho in the shoulder.

“Was that thing you said about ice cream flooding a joke?”

“Yes,” Cho Cho said. “I’m glad you picked that up. _Eventually_.” She grinned crookedly. “My emergency game plan for that sad happenstance would be to eat my way out, honestly.”

“Oh. That would be very impressive.” His gaze flickered towards the floor. “And a little bit gross. But mostly impressive.” His eyes met hers again. "I think this will be fun. You are a very interesting person."

“Am I?” Cho Cho, suddenly very awkward and sweaty feeling. "Yeah, well. Uh. Right back at you?" She finger gunned at him and briskly walked away out into the summer day. The bright sun blinded her for a second, so she kept her head down and attempted to get as far away from Mitsuki as possible. Only, he kept on following her.

“Shouldn’t we discuss the mission more?”

“Uh,” she said, _very intelligently_ , swatting his hand away from her shoulder. Why was her face so hot? “Maybe? Nah, see you tomorrow. Bye!”

Mitsuki was busy looking his hand that she previously had swatted away like it was burnt or otherwise injured, and didn’t respond in time for her to book it. Maybe she’d feel less weird and sweaty tomorrow?

-

She went to inspect her new workplace so early the next morning that there still was a chill in the air. She couldn't wear a jacket though, it would get steaming hot later in the day. What if Mitsuki saw her when she was sweaty, of all things? That would be like, so embarrassing. She would literally—

This was the point in her walk downtown that she had to mentally slap herself. She was a ninja, goddammit, and she fought bad guys for a living. Her teammates had seen her in all kinds of disarray, so a little sweatiness shouldn’t matter.

It kind of felt like it mattered when she was going to hang out with _Mitsuki_ though. Which was stupid. Thanks, she _hated_ it.  
  


Mitsuki was already waiting for her when she arrived at the scene. He had apparently already acquired the keys yesterday, and as he gave her a copy of the keys, their hands brushed.

~~(She really hoped he couldn’t feel how sweaty her hand was.)~~

The ice cream store turned out to be very… uh, rustic? The lights in the ceiling awoke with a buzz and flickered (much like in a horror movie), revealing dead flies in the window panes (ew!) and a dirty mop in a forgotten-looking corner (double ew!). The store part was tiny and cramped, and the behind-the-counter space was even less spacious. Oh, and there wasn’t any air conditioning. _In an ice cream shop._ She quickly inspected the freezer. They, at least, had some different flavors of ice cream. Vanilla, matcha, chocolate…

“I’ll clean the dead flies up. And mop the floor. You can— _Hm_ ,” Mitsuki hesitated. “I don’t know much about running an ice cream shop. Do you?”

She did not! But luckily, there was a list pinned to the wall explaining the opening and closing routines. So, they got to work.

-

All things considered, only one kid dropped his ice cream and demanded a new one on their first day. It could’ve gone way worse.

-

After closing up the shop, Mitsuki asked her if they could hang out afterward in the most straightforward way possible. This was a little bit suspicious, but not unwelcome. Her parents turned out to not be home for the evening, and as they went upstairs Mitsuki did a double-take as soon as they arrived at her bedroom door.

“Your room is very… pink,” Mitsuki said. “I like it.”

Cho Cho was just about to be offended until she considered her abundance of fluffy, (yes, _pink)_ interior design items. Especially her bed throw pillows. They could, at a distance, be mistaken for pink Persian cats. His reaction kind of made sense, all things considered.

“Yes!” she agreed. “So, uh, what you want to do? When I hang out with people here they usually watch me doing my makeup, but uh—" she snorted out a quick laugh—“You’re probably not interested in that, I assume?”

“You don’t think that I am?” he angled his head to the side, looking like a lost puppy. “Is it because of those ‘gender norms’ you have here in the Hidden Leaf? I don’t quite understand those.” He did the quotation marks around ‘gender norms’, and everything. ~~~~

“Well, if you insist,” she winked and got her makeup bag up from her desk. She got her foundation out, and Mitsuki squinted at it.

“I don’t recognize that brand name.”

 _Did he know makeup brand names?_ ~~Oh god, he was perfect—~~

“Well, that’s because it’s not available in the Land of Fire. I actually can't find complexion products that fit my skin tone here," Cho Cho said. "I buy that stuff when I go to visit my family in the Hidden Cloud."

Mitsuki nodded his head like he had sympathy but didn’t quite know how to respond. Frankly, that was the common reaction she’d get when she told other people about it. No-one of her friends here in the Hidden Leaf seemed like they could relate to these kinds of things at all. While she had never been treated badly for being darker than the village norm, sometimes she did feel excluded from little things. Like, not being able to find makeup for herself here, as an example. While that perhaps wouldn’t be a big deal to some people, it did get under her skin. It was as if people that looked like her didn’t quite exist. But she and her Mom were definitely citizens of the Hidden Leaf, even if the makeup counter didn’t necessarily reflect that.

“That sucks,” Mitsuki finally said. “I wish things were different.”

“Yeah. Me too,” Cho Cho said, letting her resentment for the stupid Hidden Leaf beauty industry linger for a moment. But, then she had an idea.

“Do you want me to do your makeup, Mitsuki?”

He visibly perked up at that, a gleam shining in his eyes. “Oh, I’ve seen my parent do their makeup several times. It looks interesting. Sure, why not.”

Technically she’d learned from Ninjatube beauty videos that it wasn’t hygienic to share makeup with other people, but she _did_ have a new unopened tube of mascara and a pencil eyeliner that she could sharpen. After a few minutes of accidentally poking Mitsuki in the eye and some smudging later, he admired her handiwork in her floor-length mirror.

“Hm. Do you have glitter?”

"Actually I usually don't use face glitter because it highlights texture in the skin—“ At Mitsuki’s disappointed reaction, she trailed off. Maybe she had some she could dig out. Said and done, she sprinkled some iridescent glitter on Mitsuki’s cheeks, like freckles.

“Now this. This is beautiful,” Mitsuki said with newfound confidence. “You did a really good job with this. You’re so passionate in everything you do. It’s very admirable.” The glitter specks started falling off his face though, _of course_ they would. She didn’t set them with anything, _duh_. Duh-doy. But somehow, the combination of just how happy the usually oh-so-stoic-Mitsuki seemed and the glitter specks falling off his face was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen.

~~Crap. Crap crap crap crap!!!!!~~

Cho Cho didn’t remember what she said next. Honestly. All she knew was they kept on laughing a lot and that he eventually left to go home, leaving her with a strange emptiness in her chest.

This was literally, like, _the worst_.

-

Cho Cho thought about a lot of mushy ~~romantic~~ stuff, perhaps too often. Especially at work. As the days spent at the ice cream shop went up in number, so did her ridiculous fantasies.

 _Mitsuki knew CPR, huh? What if he could rescue Cho Cho from drowning? That’d be interesting. Maybe they could be at the pool, but wait! Then she’d have to wear a bathing suit, how could she do that in front of a_ guy _— No, that was stupid. Why wouldn’t she be able to wear a bathing suit to a pool? That was what people were supposed to wear there. Ugh, she had to start over from the beginning—_

 _Maybe she’d stand in her dining room in her mansion, alone, wearing a fancy gown. She’d grasp a single potato chip, and put it in her mouth. The saltiness and crunchiness would be delicious, but! Somehow, it could go down the wrong pipe and she’d suddenly choke, cough,_ gag _. A dark figure could burst through a stained glass window—it’d be Mitsuki!  
“Don’t worry, I’ll save you,” he’d say and start doing the Heimlich maneuver on her._

_“Eughghhhhhwwhh,” she’d gargle, and spit out the soggy bits of the formerly-potato chip. Now that was nasty. She’d have spit all over her face._

_“Don’t worry, I don’t mind. All humans are just nasty in general,” Mitsuki would say like he was reading her mind. And then he’d sweep her off her feet and embrace her in a passionate kiss—_

“When you have time, can you fix the clog in the sink?” Real life-Mitsuki said, effectively interrupting her daydream. “I’m busy taking orders. We have a line. It's making me feel excitement but also dread. But it'll be fine as long as we work together, I think.”

Cho Cho looked around wildly. Mitsuki was telling the truth, the sink truly was clogged, and there certainly was a line at the counter. They probably shouldn’t discuss the cloggedness of the sink so openly.

"Uh— I'll help you with the orders, then we fix the sink when all the customers are distracted," she stage-whispered to him.

Mitsuki nodded sagely. “You’re so resourceful, Cho Cho.”

She bent her head down, trying to hide how dizzy and flushed and fluttery she suddenly felt, god help her if it showed in her face—

“Are you okay?”

Cho Cho wished that he'd stop staring at her like that and just get back to work already. Eventually, the line decreased and all the customers had left, with no doubt enjoying the sunny weather outside. Unclogging the sink turned out to be harder than most S-rank missions she’d been on. This time, she couldn’t use her partial expansion Jutsu and smash the problem away. Mitsuki seemed to have similar difficulties.

“Hm. We don’t have pipe cleaners. Do you think one of my snakes would work— _No_. That’s not an option. I’ll never hear the end of it. They’ll start biting me in my sleep.”

At her sudden, _genuine_ barked out laugh, he went a bit sheepish. He averted his eyes and pretended to get back to work. It was cute. Like, so cute. The clogged sink was eventually defeated, and closing time was just around the corner. They finished up, and just about as they were locking the shop up, Mitsuki suggested that they'd hang out afterward this day too. Cho Cho was admittedly very tired after a long day of work, but she really, really didn’t want to say no.

-

Mitsuki still wasn’t the best conversationalist, and it made for an awkward meeting with her parents.

“So. Uh, you and Cho Cho are on a mission together right now…?” Mom asked around her mouthful of dinner. “I remember seeing you around at the academy when you were like, this tall. You’re so grown up now, it’s crazy.”

“It truly is,” Mitsuki answered with a serious nod. “My parent says that I am taller than they expected from their research-based growth chart.”

“That’s… _great_!” Dad said, looking down on Mitsuki’s untouched plate. “Uh, don’t you want to eat some—?”

Mitsuki took one bite of the noodles. “It’s really good.”

They’d have to work on this— This? What was _this_? Cho Cho was just _working_ with Mitsuki ~~and spending all her time with him, and still wishing she could spend more.~~

Having a crush was the _worst._

After dinner, somehow Cho Cho got the idea that them going up to her room felt way too intimate, so: to the porch they went. It gave them the illusion of privacy, but not too much. The sun was setting, too. Was it already that late in the day? The colors of the sky were a mix of orange and pink, reminding her of the orange/raspberry ice cream at work. Ugh— Focus on the moment, Cho Cho, _focus_!

The conversation came to a halt as they sat down on an outdoor sofa. The couch squeaked as she shifted her body weight, reminding her of the fact that she took up the majority of the seating space on it compared to Mitsuki. Cho Cho crossed her arms and hunched in on herself. She could feel the soft rolls of her stomach through the thin fabric of her dress.

“Sorry,” she said.

“For what?” Mitsuki looked at her quizzically. He was sitting very close, she realized now. When had he scooted in?

She picked at the hem of her dress with her long nails, scratching the fabric. Ugh, it was horrible quality, why had she bought it? “For squishing you. You know, since this couch is so small.”

“You’re not squishing me,” Mitsuki chuckled, close enough that she could feel his breath on his face. “But even if you were, I wouldn’t mind.”

And then, he kissed Cho Cho. It wasn’t a bad kiss, per se, it was quite nice actually. But neither of them really knew what to do with their hands, awkward teenagers as they were, and she was still kind of picking at her dress and in her surprise _kind of_ tore the fabric a little bit and now she had a hole in her skirt, goddammit—

“Oh. You don’t like it?” Mitsuki said, quite literally backtracking physically at the speed of light. Her frustration must’ve shown through, Mitsuki had even gotten up from the sofa and now awkwardly hovered on the steps of the patio like he was just about ready to bolt.

Cho Cho’s face suddenly flushed hot. Her attention ping-ponged from the gnarly tear in her skirt to the way Mitsuki, _horrified_ look of his face, had jumped away from her. And to what he had just said. But it was hard because he just kept on talking:

“Do you want me to leave? I don’t understand what you want,” he said, eyes directed more at the garden grass than her.

A rush of anxiety flooded her. “No, no—I was just surprised as all, so I tore a hole in my dress. You know how it is with long nails.” She tried to smooth it over with a forced laugh that came out more than slightly hysterical.

He thoroughly examined his own short, stubby nails. “No.”

Cho Cho sprinted up towards him, grabbing his hand. “Ugh-I’m just. Stupid with words. I really do like you! Like, a lot! I’m just bad at expressing it.”

He blinked and stayed quiet for a very long time. Like he was figuring out what to say. So, she took matters into her own hands and kissed him back.

Later it turned out that her parents had been watching through their window the whole time, and had placed bets on whether or not Cho Cho and Mitsuki had a _thing_.

(Dad had won. Ugh, was she really so obvious?)

_The End_

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! please leave me kudos and comments if you've enjoyed this!


End file.
